Anyways, I'm still alive and healthy as of this posting. In all my life, I would never have dreamed that I would be celebrating my 64th birthday being sheltered at home due to a world wide pandemic. Yeah, my birthday was this past May 27th and it was a pretty uneventful day, to say the least. I would have liked to have spent my birthday in Vegas like I've done in the past, but I guess I should be thankful that I have not contracted Covid-19 at least to my knowledge. Covid-19 testing is still only available for those who are symptomatic. Hopefully, a vaccine will be available in the near future and things will start getting back to some normalcy again.
So, what have I been doing to keep occupied for the past couple of months? Other than my normal routines like cleaning house, laundry, grocery shopping, cooking/baking, and a few other boring tasks, I've pretty much turned into a couch potato. I've been watching a lot of shows/movies on cable TV, as well as on a few streaming services. I have Amazon Prime and I've also signed up for trial offers for CBS All Access and Disney+. I've binge watched Star Trek Discovery and Picard on CBS All Access, but I decided not to renew the service, after the trial period was over. My Disney+ is free for 1 yr with my Verizon iPhone plan, so I have plenty of time to decide, if it's worth continuing before the trial ends. Although, I got hooked on season one of the Mandalorian which is much better than I had expected.
I've been spending way too much time online checking my social media accounts, participating on a few Las Vegas travel boards, as well as following various Vloggers on YouTube. I've actually thought about giving vlogging a try, so we'll see. LOL
I also have a few indoor hobbies that keeps me busy including playing guitar (I managed to learn a few new tunes), photo/video editing, and VR gaming (I have an Oculus Rift S and an Oculus GO). Actually, playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Rift S can give you quite a workout when playing at the higher levels, so it's one way that I've been getting some exercise.
Luckily, I've had self-control and haven't gone on any shopping sprees over on Amazon and other online stores which could prove tempting during the shelter at home restrictions, especially when my stimulus check is sitting in my bank account. LOL Although, I did buy myself a birthday present and ordered a DJI Mavic Mini drone with the Fly More Combo. I've been testing it out by flying it around inside my condo. It's a cool little drone with an onboard camera that's stabilized on a gimble and shoots 2.7K HD videos/12MP photos. I thought about getting the Mavic 2 Pro which is a full featured drone that shoots 4K videos, but it's a bigger investment, not to mention that it also comes with more FAA and local restrictions when it comes to where it can be flown.
Being under 250g in weight, the Mavic Mini doesn't have to be registered with the FAA unlike it's big brother the Mavic 2 Pro, but it's still subject to FAA and local flying regulations. Since the airspace where my condo is located is in a restricted air zone, I can't fly it outside. So, I have to wait until these shelter at home restrictions end and everything starts to open up again before I can get out to areas with unrestricted airspace to fly and shoot some aerial videos/photos. I'm hoping to take the Mavic Mini along when I travel, since it's pocket size when it's folded down and everything fits easily into my backpack, along with my other 360 cameras and whatnot.
So, what other stuff looks tempting to buy? A couple of things. I've been reading some good reviews of the new Sony ZV1 camera which will officially go on sale in a week or two. One thing that's nice is that it's pocket sized so it's ideal for traveling. I've been reluctant to bring my full size digital SLR along, since I like to travel light, but the smaller ones on the market didn't have all of the features that I wanted. This new Sony is loaded with some good features including a one inch sensor which is great for low light shooting, a fixed 24mm-70mm zoom lens with a 1.8W-2.8T aperture rating, incredible auto-focusing, both lens and digital stabilization, on-board microphones that rival most high quality add-on mics, and a good number of other perks which makes it a tempting alternative for shooting videos/photos. I currently shoot most of my videos/photos with an iPhone X and on Insta360 360 cameras which can generate some nice media, but often sucks in many low light situations, since they have much smaller sensors.
A few negative things about the ZV1 is the battery life which is only rated for about an hour and it's located at the bottom of the camera. So, you'll need a few spares if you'll be shooting throughout the day. Also, if the camera is mounted on a tripod for example, you will have to remove the tripod in order to swap out the battery. It has a fixed zoom lens, so it's not as versatile as a full size digital SLR with interchangeable lenses. The widest angle is 24mm which may not be wide enough for some vloggers. The 1.8 aperture rating only occurs when the lens is set at 24mm and increases as you zoom in. So for low light situations, you'll may have to shoot at 24mm.
The combo set which includes the vlogging handle/tripod/remote and a 64GB SD card is currently on sale for the next 3 weeks, so I have to decide whether to pull the trigger and purchase one, if I want to save an extra $50.
Apple has also been dangling a carrot in front of my nose, since they came out with their latest 16" MacBook Pro. My current iMac is a few years old now and the CPU/GPU doesn't have quite enough processing power for editing 5.7K and higher 360 videos using Adobe Premiere Pro. Currently, I have to create lower res proxy files for my videos before I can edit them and rendering out the completed edits takes forever, literally several hours for just a 30min 360 video. Although, I don't think that I want to spend close to $5000 on a fully decked out MacBook Pro right now, so I'm going to stick with my current iMac for a bit longer. LOL
Anyways, our state/city are starting to loosen the restrictions on non-essential businesses and our governor has ended the statewide shelter at home mandate the other day. So, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope that as things start to open up again that there isn't a second surge in Covid-19.
